History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working-Class History

305 Pages·2017·14.18 MB·English

by  James R. Barrett

History from the Bottom Up
and the Inside Out
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james r. barrett
History from the Bottom Up
and the Inside Out
Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working- Class History
Duke University Press · Durham and London · 2017
© 2017 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker
Typeset in Trade Gothic and Arno Pro by Westchester Publishing Ser vices
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Barrett, James R., [date] author.
Title: History from the bottom up and the inside out : ethnicity, race, and
identity in working-class history / James R. Barrett.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers:
lccn 2017002151 (print)
lccn 2017006258 (ebook)
isbn 9780822369677 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn 9780822369790 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn 9780822372851 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Working class—United States—History. | Minorities—
United States—History. | Identity (Psychology)—United States—History.
Classification: lcc hd8066.b37 2017 (print) | lcc hd8066 (ebook) |
ddc 305.5/620973—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002151
Cover art: Lewis W. Hine, Tenement Child with a Blank Wall to Stare At, ca. 1910. Gelatin
silver print, 11.4 × 16.6 cm. Courtesy George Eastman Museum.
In memory of
Thomas E. Barrett Jr.,
Mark Leff,
and David Montgomery
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contents
Foreword · David R. Roediger · ix
Acknowl edgments · xvii
introduction
The Subjective Side of Working- Class History · 1
chapter one
The Blessed Virgin Made Me a Socialist Historian:
An Experiment in Catholic Autobiography and the Historical
Understanding of Race and Class · 7
chapter two
Was the Personal Po liti cal?
Reading the Autobiography of American Communism · 33
chapter three
Revolution and Personal Crisis:
William Z. Foster, Personal Narrative, and the Subjective
in the History of American Communism · 58
chapter four
Blue- Collar Cosmopolitans:
Toward a History of Working- Class
Sophistication in Industrial Amer ic a · 77
chapter five
The Bohemian Writer and the Radical Woodworker:
A Study in Class Relations · 102
chapter six
Americanization from the Bottom Up:
Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class
in the United States, 1880–1930 · 122
chapter seven
Inbetween Peoples:
Race, Nationality, and the “New Immigrant” Working Class
James R. Barrett and David R. Roediger · 145
chapter eight
Irish Americanization on Stage:
How Irish Musicians, Playwrights, and Writers Created
a New Urban American Culture, 1880–1940 · 175
chapter nine
Making and Unmaking the Working Class:
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the En glish Working Class,
and the “New Labor History” in the United States · 192
Notes · 209
Selected Bibliography · 273
Index · 277
foreword · david r. roediger
My first vivid memories of Jim Barrett, and of his wife Jenny, go back to
the early 1970s and to a sadly underpopulated picket line in the parking lot
of a small liquor store in the farm and university town of DeKalb, Illinois.
The United Farm Workers had called for a boycott of Gallo wines and we
gave what support we could—in this case a picket line of four people. There
was plenty of time for our small group to talk, and a lot for me to like about
Jim and Jenny. They were gradu ate students in history at Northern Illinois
University, a department whose excellence resulted largely from a rec ord of
being willing to hire left scholars when other colleges hewed to Cold War
exclusion based on politics. I was an undergraduate trying to balance sports
with making the New Left last a little longer. Jim and Jenny, just slightly
older, seemed to have access to the combination of ideas and action I sought.
We w ere all lapsed, or lapsing, Catholics and, coming from working- class
communities, we all gravitated t oward labor causes, especially if racial justice
were also involved.
Not too long after that picket line, the Barretts moved on to Warwick Uni-
versity in Coventry, England, where E. P. Thompson was a professor, and
to the University of Pittsburgh, where Jim studied with David Montgom-
ery. His recollections of those formative experiences, leavened by research
on Thompson’s enduring impact in working- class history, help to close this
book. My decision to go to gradua te school surely owed much to knowing
radicals like the Barretts, who seemed in some general way to be like me.
The idea of doing history from the bottom up, so brilliantly actualized in
Al Young’s seminars at Northern Illinois, continued to animate large parts
of what we endeavored to study. I set out to write about “slavery from the
slave’s point of view” u nder Sterling Stuckey’s mentorship at Northwestern.
Jim shared Montgomery’s emphasis on the daily realities of the shopfloor,